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      SMS Notifications

      Create engaging, on-brand notifications with the most accessible channel

      SMS offers a number of benefits when it comes to communication with your guests:

      1. Highest open rates (up to 98% as industry average). When you notify guests via SMS, you can be confident they will see the message.
      2. Accessible for a diverse group of guests. Non-tech savvy and older guests find SMS to be the easiest (and sometimes the only) way to communicate.
      3. Easy to set up.

      Configuring SMS notifications

      1. Activate the SMS feature

      If you haven't already, go to the SMS settings page and activate the feature.

      2. Create notification templates

      Before any SMS will go out, you will need to configure SMS templates. These are similar to Email templates, and allow you to customise notifications per your brand voice.

      For help on creating effective templates, visit our SMS Templates Guide.

      3. Activate SMS for the desired shift

      For each shift you can define separately if and which SMS you want to send, e.g. SMS for manual reservations in the backend, for online reservation reminders and one SMS each for provisional reservations, confirmations and cancellations sent to the guest. In addition, SMS for reservation reminders and SMS for reviews after the restaurant visit can be activated separately.

      Select the appropriate shift under Settings -> Shifts and activate the desired SMS. In the following example, only the automatic SMS  for a reservation reminder is activated.

      sms_activate_shift_en

      Pricing

      Each SMS segment costs 0.09 EUR.

      What is an SMS segment?

      Each SMS message consists of one or more "segments". Typically, each segment allows for 160 characters. If your SMS is 161 characters, it will be made of 2 segments, and you will be charged for both.

      However, if you use special characters, the number of characters per segment goes down to 70. This includes non-Latin characters, emojis or simply characters outside of the basic character set. In this case, your 160 character message becomes 3 segments instead of 1.

      For more on SMS segments, read What The Heck Is A Segment?

      Tips on minimising costs

      Read our SMS Templates Guide to learn more on how to make your notifications cost less by reducing the template length and avoiding certain tags.

      Estimating your SMS costs

      Depending on your setup, you should be able to get a ballpark estimate. First collect the following data points:

      1. Average number of reservations in a month.
      2. Average % of reservations with a phone number. On average, we see about 70% of reservations made with phone number details, but your case may differ.
      3. Number of segments per notification. If you follow our guide and use short messages without extra tags, assume 1 segment per notification. If you use more tags or longer templates, assume 2 or more.
      4. Number of SMS templates enabled. Template could be "Reservation confirmation" and "Reservation reminder".

      Then simply multiply all variables:

      Total reservations × Percentage with phone details × Number of segments × Number of templates × 0.09 EUR.

      For example, if you get 500 reservations per month and use short templates and only send confirmation and reminder, your cost could be:

      500 × 70% × 1 × 2 × 0.09 EUR = 63 EUR.

      If you need more help, reach out to our Customer Success team.